<< Do you think it's difficult to consider the cops in family might be bad? Not at all..I accept we are all humans. That said, define bad for me so that we ar

<< Do you think it's difficult to consider the cops in family might be bad? Not at all..I accept we are all humans. That said, define bad for me so that we are not talking about fairly relative and abstract terms and can be easily misconstrued. For example, I do not want to get into specifics and you are certainly right that they would be foolish to disclose their own transgressions if any were committed for several different reasons. However, the conversations we did have on some events[1] they were not involved in painted a relatively close picture of their thought process and considerations at play. I am going to paraphrase and try to capture the gist of that conversation in sentences that follow where 'they' refers to the cops on the scene ( and to an extent the blue shield/line phenomenon ). In short, one of their own fucked up. They knew he fucked up, but they tried to protect him from immediate fallout. As related, they said family was paid off, but 'could not keep their mouths shut', which is where the resentment was with those who did not hold up their end of the bargain that was supposedly struck. And naturally, when the case made national news, everyone was pissed, because assumption was that money bought silence on the matter ( who footed the bill for that silence was not clear, but, presumably taxpayer ). Now, the political fallout makes it more complicated, because the rank and file has had the impression that case was informally settled and, from their perspective, it was 'over'. Rank and file finds out they get no cover from leadership and so the thin blue line only grows stronger as a result. Now, you might be thinking: "This is exactly what I am talking about. If you participate in any way in this, you are the bad guy.' I urge you to consider what you would have done. This case was a clearly fucked up case. I would like to think I would have stood up. That said, as a cop, just like when you are a doctor, or a lawyer or any other high stakes job, you will eventually make a mistake that will result in someone dying. You will fuck up. And in some extreme cases, you will kill someone. That is the reality of that job. And it is a lot to take in. There are logical consequences to what I just said and I absolutely recognize it can be horrifying. There is a reason I compared cops to doctors and lawyers, because I think this could help offset some of the issues should we ever get to an actual working improvement of police in US, but I don't want to get too far ahead of this conversation. With that in mind lets go through some of the scenarios: 'if you know your actions in the course of work may end up killing someone are you automatically a bad person?' 'if you identify with a group, because you understand the toll it takes, are you automatically a bad person?' 'if you become a member of that group, because $absolute_number_of_members did $bad_thing, are you automatically a bad person?' I have more questions along those lines, but I worry that I already threw out a lot into the ether so I am curious of your response. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laquan_McDonald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laquan_McDonald